What You Missed About Inception:
For me, a truly great film isn’t really like a masterpiece. A masterpiece, after all, is more about critical praise and the apex of one’s career. Inception is great in a different way. It’s just smart. It didn’t receive universal, critical praise (though it got some) because it completely went over the heads of almost everyone.
For all of you who think you “get” the movie, I sincerely doubt that more than a handful actually caught everything that was going on in the story.
Here’s a test to see if you did: do you think the ending was a cliffhanger? Because if you did, you are dead wrong.
With Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar coming out this week, I thought it would be fun to revisit one of the first fan theories I ever wrote. I wrote this piece about Inception and it’s myriad secrets back in 2013, and I’m still finding more reasons for why it’s one of the best films, period. And why most people don’t seem to fully grasp how important it was.
Check it out here in case you haven’t had a chance to read it.
Yes, great movie. The most complex and fascinating world is the many-layered world of the human mind.
I think Inception is the best movie ever made! Followed by The Dark Knight! I loved the movie very much and later I started reading about dreaming and lucid dreaming and it made me realize how great Inception was! This article made me love it even more! Christopher Nolan is just brilliant! Dreaming is a great thing that needed to be explored and appreciated and Nolan did that pretty well!
I still love the Prestige more than Inception. Not sure why.
Great post. Saw a youtube video recently that kinda talks about the same stuff with the totems. Can’t remember what it was called.
Inception sucks. Its boring, has too many characters and who cares about any plot twists. Prestige is Nolan’s best movie and Nolan is overrated anyway. Barry Lyndon for example is one of the best movies ever made and 100000 times better than Inception. Please watch more movies.
Barry Lyndon isn’t even the best Kubrick film.
Yes it is. Even Martin Scorsese says so.
Scorsese has said his favorite Kubrick film is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also, who cares what Scorsese thinks? If Barry Lyndon is your favorite Kubrick film, power to you.
I have watched this mover 4 times and still love it. Always see something new every time. However, even on the second viewing, the supposed “cliffhanger” was completely resolved: the top wobbled before the cut at the end. So, it is going to fall. Period. You don’t need to see it fall. If you know anything about the physics of tops, then a wobble signals that the top is doomed and WILL fall. So, there is no cliffhanger about whether or not it is “reality” at the end. I just think that Nolan assumed that his audience was smart enough to get that. (Ha! Bet he won’t make that mistake again!)
That said, does it mean that Cobb really is in “reality” at the end?… That I was never entirely sure of. With a Nolan film, you cannot take anything for granted. While I like to think that Cobb got what he wanted in the end, I have a nagging feeling that things are way more unsure at the end, and Negroni makes some excellent points and observations of a few things that I had missed or hadn’t considered. Will need to think on that — and re-watch the film,! (Thanks for giving me an excuse to do that! As if I needed one…)